Modes of repression then and now – a discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the June Fourth movement

Thirty years after the brutal suppression of a workers- and students-led democracy movement around Tiananmen Square in Beijing and numerous other cities, this seminar will bring together activists and scholars for a discussion of how modes of repression in 1989 compare to China under Xi Jinping, and to assess the legacy of the movement and the prospects for human rights and democracy activism today.

Speaker biographies

Shao Jiang, a former prisoner of conscience for his active role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement, is a committed activist-scholar, who lives and works in exile in London. The academic interests focus on politics and media, social movement, democratisation, feminism, law in PRC and Hong Kong, autonomy & sovereignty & self-determination, international Human Rights mechanisms, comparative studies on development models and political institutions, theory and practice of Civil Society. His publications include Citizen Publications in China before the Internet (Palgrave, 2015).

Hermann Aubié is Lecturer in Sociology and Politics at Aston University. After working and studying in China and Finland for about ten years, he joined Aston in January 2017. His research interests focus on human rights, civil society transformations and disability rights advocacy in East Asia, with particular attention to how citizens use the law and media to promote sociopolitical change and to redress injustice for individuals/groups who are excluded. Another strand of his research examines the emerging movement around a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Europe and East Asia from a comparative perspective. In 2016 he completed a PhD dissertation titled Liu Xiaobo's Human Rights Struggle. A Contextual Analysis from a Historical Perspective, which is soon coming out as a book.

Perry Keller is Reader in Media and Information Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, where he teaches and researches issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy and data protection. He is the author of European and International Media Law. Mr Keller also has longstanding connections with China, having previously studied or worked in Beijing, Nanjing, Taipei and Hong Kong. His current research interests regarding law and regulation in China concern the development of a divergent Chinese model for securing data privacy and security.

Eva Pils is a Professor of Law at King’s College London, where she teaches courses on human rights, public law, law and society in China, and authoritarianism and the law. She is author of China's human rights lawyers: advocacy and resistance (Routledge, 2014) and of Human rights in China: a social practice in the shadows of authoritarianism (Polity, 2018). Her current research addresses the challenges to human rights and the rule of law that arise from authoritarian conceptions and practices of governance and the boundaries of legal and political resistance.

About the Human Rights, Development and Global Justice Series

Our series aims to create an open, interdisciplinary academic platform for the discussion of issues related to human rights, development and global justice. Special attention is given to the global south, but not to the exclusion of other places.

We hope to generate exchanges furthering academic insight and creativity, to strengthen the School’s connections with scholars around the world, and to enrich undergraduate and postgraduate teaching curricula among the School’s wide offering of modules related to the jurisprudence of human rights, transnational human rights, and global justice more widely.

The events series is currently convened by Professor Eva Pils. It is supported by funding provided by The Dickson Poon School of Law. For information about other events in the series, please visit the King's College London website.